Joe Holland, A Regenerative Vision for Christianity

Maddie: Let's start with your background. I want to hear about your life in general, and you as a person. You were formerly a catholic priest, correct? 

Joe: Yes, I was ordained in 1965 and worked in Connecticut and Puerto Rico. I grew up in Connecticut and New York City in a very Irish Catholic home. My grandfather was the head of the Saloon Keepers Association in New York City. He had two Irish pubs in Manhattan, one right off Broadway's Times Square and one in Chelsea. My father was a commercial real-estate attorney, and his office was also on Broadway near my grandfather's pub. So I grew up on Broadway, hanging out at my grandfather's bars with my cousins as a little kid. It was like going to McDonald's, you could get hamburgers and coke and french fries, and all for free! It was right next to CBS, so the actors would come over, and they would bring us over to the studios. Then we moved to Connecticut, where my mother was from. That was a much different, rural experience. There I grew up hunting, fishing, and camping. So I had two sides in my youth - the urban and the rural sides. In Connecticut, I attended seminary after high school. I was going to go to Yale but decided on seminary instead. After that, I did undergraduate and graduate studies, first studying classical languages, then obtaining an undergraduate degree in philosophy, followed by four more years of theology. In my master's degree in biblical studies, I did a dissertation on the gospel of Mark in the original Greek. That was my first major writing project. 

Maddie: Why did you choose Mark? 

Joe: Mark is the oldest and earliest gospel. Clearly, in Mark, Jesus is not the figure that we often hear about as "Christ the King". Rather, he's a prophet like Moses. In the Old Testament, we have these two central figures - David and Moses. In the case of David the king, the word of God comes through the king and to the people. In the case of Moses the prophet, the word of God comes from the bottom up, from the people against the king, the pharaoh of Egypt. The two are very different. Western Christianity lived since the time of the Constantinian turn in the 4th century in what I call the Davidic mode. Christianity was appropriated, in the Catholic case, by the Roman Empire. Later, in the Protestant case, it became identified with national governments. It was all top-down. In Judaism, because the Temple had been destroyed and leveled by the Roman army, Jews in the diaspora identified with Moses more than David. Judaism in the diaspora became Mosiac, while Christianity in the Holy Roman Empire became Davidic. Now, we're at the collapse of the imperial age, the end of colonialism, and the rise of liberating movements, including Liberation Theology. Prophetic sectors of Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, are shifting to the Mosaic mode and becoming critical of society. It's a different movement in Christianity. I think the Holy Spirit is leading us to this regenerative and prophetic form of Christianity. Also, in the Mosaic mode, the covenant links together the Creator, the people, and the land. So there's always an ecological dimension in the Mosaic covenant. 

Maddie: It's interesting when you think about the Jewish tradition. They have a lot of practice being the outcast, and it would make sense that they wouldn't connect as much to the Davidic tradition. In America, we were founded on the idea of being religious exiles who are building a new government. 

Joe: Yes, but the early white European settlers said, "This [America] is a new Jerusalem!" And then the black slaves listened to white preaching and, in disagreement, they said, "Oh no, this is not a new Jerusalem, this is Egypt land! We're slaves like the Jews were in Egypt. God is going to liberate us, and the white slave owners are Pharaoh." Those are two entirely different interpretations - white Christianity in the Davidic mode, and black Christianity in the Mosaic mode. In the black spiritual hymns, you get a very strong sense of Moses. In past European Christianity, you get king David and Christ the King.

But Jesus's first sermon was all about liberating the oppressed and the poor, freeing the captives and the prisoners. It was all in Moses' language. 

Also, in the Hebrew Torah, there are lots of ecological legislations. The idea that the Bible holds nothing ecological is nonsense. In fact, the Hebrew word adam in the Book of Genesis is not a person's name. It means the earth-creature, who comes from the adamah, which in Hebrew means the Earth - almost like the earth mother brings forth the earth creature. Despite what some Western Christians may think, it is an ecological story. And the whole story happens in a garden.